


The Scarlet Flower

by Frin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:52:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frin/pseuds/Frin
Summary: Okay... so a very long one for me... it was triggered by an interview on confidential with Billie Piper during series 4... The title is after a Russian animation of that old familiar tale, cos as you know, Disney never owned it! X





	The Scarlet Flower

“Does Tony understand Russian, then?” he asked Jackie as he observed the two siblings sitting close together in the sumptuous Tyler mansion.

“Well, no… but I’d rather it was something a little more educational whilst he’s watching cartoons…”

“Above Disney now you’re amongst the social elite?”

“Not at all… and I daresay if Disney had existed here, we may very well watch the odd one, however, he didn’t and besides, a little foreign animation won’t do him any harm. Rose loved this storyline as a child, whatever form it came in…” Jackie eyed him sideways and then carried on to the drawing room where she began to arrange the red carnations she had received from Pete that morning.

He remained in the doorway watching them, wondering if he should get involved, do a little translation, discuss the plot. Then he thought better of it. It was such delicate territory they were in right now. Rose still had an awful lot of head-sorting to do before he would be able to completely relax in his new skin. He would have to be a little patient in this matter, unfortunately. 

Later on, he had found her upstairs sitting on the window seat of her bedroom looking out into the garden without actually seeing it at all. Her face was blotchy and her mascara smudged.

“Alright?” he asked hesitantly and she smiled a bleary smile at him holding out a hand. He walked towards her and took it, grasped at it as if he were the drowning man.

“I’m sorry… I was thinking… you know?”

“Yes…” he was a little angered by this, she expected him to understand that she was in mourning for him and he did, he really did. But… it didn’t stop him feeling this way. Of course she would need to say goodbye inside, but it was such a waste of time when he was right here ready and waiting for her to begin their life together. But he couldn’t show her his impatience at this, no, he had to bite his tongue and wait for her to catch up.

“That film…” she said and turned her head back to the window as a new cascade of tears slipped down her cheeks.

“What about it?”

“You know… the girl, she goes to live with a beast to save her father and ends up falling in love with him… when he nearly dies she saves him with true loves kiss and he is transformed into her perfect partner…”

“I know the story, Rose; it’s been around for eons in one form or another…”

“But what happened to the beast, where did he go when he was… changed? Is the handsome prince really the same, how can he be?” she blurted out these questions and turned to him in all sincerity as if desperate for him to give her the answers.

“It’s just a fairy tale, Rose…” he muttered avoiding her eyes, but she just kept looking at him, waiting for him to begin. Then he stood up abruptly and began to nervously pace the room.

“Well… of course he was the same! Don’t you see? She found the man within as she grew to know him… he was always there! The spell he was under didn’t allow him to be himself and… when she loved him for who he was not what he was, she broke the spell and freed him!” He stopped suddenly worried he had said too much but she was looking up at him intently as if she was seeing him for the first time.

“But where did the beast go?” she asked again.

“He didn’t go anywhere… he’s right here…” There was a moments silence as she contemplated him.

“But what about…” she stopped herself short. He sighed and sat down beside her again.

“Rose… I know you understand it… I can’t force you to accept it… but I really want you to. I was made for you… no, no hear me out… truly I was… spent so many nights tossing and turning, worrying myself sick over my feelings for you and how we would never be able to act on them… and then when we were separated, I pined miserably for the worry of you… I missed you so much, but I was used to losing people… I always lose people. But you had basically imprinted on me the day I became me… stupid past me… bloody giving you this irresistible fizzog… what was he thinking? Anyway… where was I?”

“Pining… made for me… imprinted? Losing people?”

“Yeah, well… it wasn’t just that… if you had ‘imprinted’ on me, then I had imprinted on you too… the thought of you getting on with life without me… of you finding someone else… even of you making a go of it with Mickey… it pretty damn near killed me…” he stopped and looked at her, waited for her disapproval but she nodded her head through watery eyes.

“Yeah… me too… but it wasn’t fair of me to feel that way… it was selfish…”

“Love is selfish, Rose…”

“This isn’t making me feel any better about… about him…”

“Rose… when a Time Lord regenerates everything about him is supposed to change… everything… not just his looks but the way he feels… memories are retained but nothing much else. That’s what’s supposed to happen. When you met me I was so broken… I was lost and you found me, Rose, you fixed me… how could I let you down by regenerating? So I refused to let the feelings go… that was wrong… against the rules, but it didn’t stop me. I designed myself on what I thought you would want… thought that he was the beast and that made this face the handsome prince.”

“But I loved…”

“I know that now, Rose… you fell in love with me, and at the time I was so scared of losing you but that happened anyway… separated by dimensions as if Time were punishing me… I began to change… I was harder, colder… took more risks… it was almost as if all the humanity you gave me was leaking away… it was just a matter of time before I… anyway… then you found your way back to me as I should have known you would… and suddenly there was an opportunity to allow us to be together and so I took it. Above everything else this me here didn’t want to be apart from you ever again.”

“And so is he over there being tortured at the thought of you and me?”

“No… because that man isn’t me.”

“What?”

“Rose… I know I sent you away to keep you safe… I know I’ve done it twice and three times you returned to me… and I saw the opportunities… the TARDIS showed me what we could have… I wasn’t going to send you away again… but to not be able to have a proper life with you, to go back to what we had… it couldn’t be done… and as that man… I couldn’t have given you more and I so wanted to…”

“What are you saying…?”

“I stored the feelings into this hand knowing what the outcome was going to be… not necessarily how we were going to get there…”

“You mean… he doesn’t have feelings for me?”

“He still cares, Rose, but its all dampened down… I kept all that… he doesn’t need it…”

“But what does that make him?”

“Sorry?”

“You said I made you better, that I fixed you… if all the humanity I was supposed to have given you is no longer there… what does that make him?”

“Rose…”

“It makes him the beast… again, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know… I’m sorry, but I really don’t… he’s got his own life now… and it doesn’t include you… he made that choice, Rose… you know that? He left you here, walked away. I would never do that, never…”

She didn’t respond to this but turned from him again as she tried to work it through her numb head.

“He may be harder now, Rose, and that might hurt you, but surely that’s better? It’s true he does need someone to rein him in now and again, but he doesn’t need to feel the loss of you again, nor ever will he. I said to you it was only a matter of time before… and it truly is… he’s already been warned…”

“What, he’s going to get himself killed and that makes it alright?”

“It removes you further still and that should give you some peace! You will be nothing but a guilty memory to him and that in itself is his peace. The way I’ve been able to say good bye to people in the past is through regeneration… it can be very cleansing and I’m truly sorry if it hurts you to hear me say it. I did this for the best, Rose, gave you my all and let the Time Lord walk… how much more do you want?”

“You just have to give me time…” she said softly after a long pause and he opened his mouth to make some glib comment about wearing the tshirt of time and then shut it again, thinking better of it.

“Okay… but please don’t let this eat you up… I don’t want that so nor would he, right?”

“Right…”

**********

It was gradual, their blossoming friendship; as they stepped cautiously into a life together without actually being together.

Torchwood wasn’t for him, he said, but he accompanied her most days so he could potter around the miscellaneous artefact and talk with the various aliens that were either imprisoned or who had found sanctuary there.

Rose was always conscious of where he was, seemingly keeping tabs on him; and, on their journeys home she would grill him about who he had befriended that day.

She was relieved to see him adapt to his new life so easily and work continued to be as busy as it had been in the years she had been trapped here. He wasn’t officially employed by Torchwood, but nevertheless, there was hardly a day gone by that he wasn’t as involved with it as she.

She barely had time to think about him.

And then… the nightmares began.

It was the middle of the night and she passed by his bedroom en route to the bathroom. By now they were living in her London flat as the to-ing and fro-ing from the Mansion had bogged them down too much. They had both silently agreed to separate bedrooms and so it had continued.

She heard him cry out and stopped. He muttered and she could hear him turning amongst the sheets as if he were in flight. She remembered her first Doctor had had this problem. She had helped him. But, now… now she felt like an intruder. Should she go in? She hesitated at the door but he quietened down and she went back to bed that time.

The second time wasn’t as subtle. They had had quite a day of it; Pete had been badly injured after a rogue Smathloo had landed in some derelict land near the docks. It was frightened and hit out; its target had become Pete who it mistakenly believed to be in command. They met Jackie at the hospital and she wept into the bouquet of red dahlias she had bought for him as she had passed listlessly through the foyer. She was never going to be happy about any of their involvements with Torchwood and this only strengthened her doubts.

It was late when they got home and he had been beside himself with guilt believing that he could have prevented Pete’s accident with a little more fortitude.

The nightmare he had was violent and scared her no end, but she went to him and soothed him until he stilled, listening to his ramblings until the light began to creep through the curtains.

She woke a few hours later, opened her eyes to find him staring at her, shocked to see her lying beside him.

“Rose…” his voice was whispered and hopeful and it scared her no end but in entirely different way.

“You had a nightmare, you were screaming and sweating… this was the only way I could calm you down…” she said quickly and he blinked as he slowly began to realise that although they were in bed together this was not, in fact, a lover’s tryst. 

“Ah… sorry… nightmare… disturbed you, did I?”

“Well… I was worried about you… sounded like you were on some kind of adventure… not a good one… a whole planet reduced to sand, you said… people, animals, trees, oceans, the lot… all gone… and the perpetrators were earth bound… Did that actually happen?”

“No… not to me… I don’t even remember the dream…” His forehead wrinkled as if he were trying to remember something very faint and distant.

“You never met anyone called Christina?” Rose said the name with a crisp tone which he immediately recognised and had come to associate with other names such as ‘Lynda with a y’ and some old French courtesan whose name was too pompous and long winded to think on.

“Nope… Christina… nope... doesn’t ring any bells…” He could feel his heart beating nine to the dozen because it seemed that this wonderful blonde goddess was displaying something that he knew and could only mean one thing. Rose was jealous of some woman in his dreams and if she was jealous that meant…

“You were speaking in French!” she said as she caught the tail end of his thoughts on his face. She pulled herself up and off his bed and shook her head. “Don’t push it…” she muttered after a beat, but he could see a little glimmer of amusement hidden in the corners of her mouth.

“Push what? What are you accusing me of? Human, me… gonna have dreams about sultry maidens dressed in black… comes in the DNA!”

“How do you know if she was dressed in black?” Rose hit back, hands on hips and he felt his one feeble, useless, wonderful, human heart soar.

“Bog standard bloke type casting?” he hazarded but he looked more like the cat that got the cream because not only had he woken up with Rose Tyler in his bed, but she was jealous of his dreams. Rose shook her head and left him to stew in his point-scoring while she got on with the normal morning routine as if nothing unusual had happened.

He sat listening to the pipes vibrating and the kettle beginning to steam up some momentum and looked up at the ceiling. Things didn’t look quite as bleak as they had a few hours before.

**********

The next nightmare came after something fell out of the sky... something that had once been part of an alien ship. He had been called out to the sight for his expertise and she had tagged along as she was wont to do in such circumstances. It wasn’t keeping him in check, it was interest, she said, she was accompanying him to learn. He didn’t care how she justified it, that she was there was all that mattered. And wasn’t that what companions are supposed to do anyway… accompany?

Their joking was soon cut short when he discovered a tiny body amongst the debris… a small Sumpalla… it was heartbreaking to see the infant in his arms. He fought with the sniffing scientists who were all for taking the little female back to the labs for ‘intensive’ testing.

Rose held his hand as they watched the little pyre burn. Before they left she picked some poppies that were growing in the field and placed them on the ashes.

His nightmare was violent that night, he muttered of infested water and of never being able to help when he knew what the outcome was. He thrashed around trying to run from zombies and she held him tightly trying to quell the terrors within. 

When he awoke he looked more tired than he had before he fell to sleep.

“Nightmare?” he croaked as he gazed into her reddened eyes.

“Yes…” she whispered putting a hand out to touch his cheek; his eyelids fluttered shut at the contact and then quickly opened again.

“Was I … loud?”

“No… you were talking though a lot…”

“Oh?”

“Didn’t make any sense… Mars was flooding and there were zombies…”

“Pretty classic nightmare stuff…” he said trying to sound flippant even though he could still feel the fear chasing him from his dreams.

“Yup…”

“Didn’t mention anyone’s name then?” he asked casually as he rolled onto his back.

“Nope but you were insistent that you were going to get back to Adelaide… didn’t know you were fond of Oz… maybe we should take a holiday there some time?”

“Only if you promise to wear your ruby slippers…” he answered quickly, but a feeling of intense joy rumbled inside him as he registered the fact that she had suggested they travel… together.

“Breakfast?” she asked pulling herself up and groaning.

“Look… I’m sorry about… you know… you don’t have to… I’m a grown man… a few nightmares won’t harm me… so long as I’m quiet…”

“I don’t mind… interesting listening to a different sort of rambling coming out of that gob… besides… you need me...” She got up quickly and left for the bathroom. He sat there digesting what she had left him with and wondering if he should have finished off that sentence, knowing that he should feel anger at the words, but he didn’t, he was happy at them.

“That’s very me…” he muttered to the wall and then got up to follow her.

***********

Trying to rush through the city centre during the height of Christmas shopping is pretty nigh impossible and she knew she would never see the sight of a Poinsettia plant again without feeling physically sick.

The hospital was busy too, but Pete met her in the lobby and guided her quickly to his bedside explaining softly to her as they went along.

He lay in the bed be-tubed and beeping and she wept like a baby at the sight of him.

It was only by pure chance that a young medic by the name of Jones studying at the hospital had recognised him and informed Torchwood before they had treated him.

The doctors said he was in a great deal of pain, that he was weak but fighting to stay with them. They gave him no chance of coming through this alive.

Rose refused to leave him, holding his hand and talking to him non-stop. She rambled on about all they had done and seen and she held his hand so tightly that it was a wonder that the circulation continued to pump through it.

Mostly he was unconscious, but every now and then his eyes would flutter open and he would mutter words that made no sense to her. One nurse said that he had shouted out that his other heart had stopped beating.

Something kept him fighting, kept him alive even though any medicine or treatment on the Earth was beyond helping him.

This day, Rose was sitting in her usual chair, holding his hand with her head resting upon his leg when he groaned. She looked up, the monitor was making a weird noise and there were lights flashing.

“Rose?” he whispered and she jumped up into his line of vision.

“Yeah… it’s me… I’m here…”

“It hurts…”

“They can’t find anything to help you…”

“What happened?”

“You walked in front of a bus… don’t move…”

“Get this off me…” He was fidgeting with the cannula on his left hand and Rose pulled his other hand back shaking her head.

“Please don’t… you need to lie still…”

“It’s Christmas… I remember…”

“Been and gone, it’s New Years day…” she said with a small smile.

“Yeah… did you see it in properly?”

“Nah... thought I’d give it a miss this year… I was needed here anyway just in case…”

“Just in case?” he asked weakly.

“Just in case you had one of them daft nightmares…” she said quickly.

“So many dreams… am I dying?” 

“Don’t talk like that…” A tear rolled down her cheek and he struggled to raise his hand to wipe it away. The nurses were in by now checking the machines and his stats. 

“Wish I had my sonic… soon shut that stupid thing up…” he muttered, “…could ease the pain at the same time… where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“Sonic…”

“Doctor… you haven’t got one, not here…” At this moment the machines quietened and the nurses left the room giving Rose sympathetic looks as they did so. More tears spilled.

“Poor Rose Tyler sitting by an old man on New Years Day… tell you what, you’re going to have a great year to make up for it…”

“Yeah? Not without you, I’m not…” she sniffed, lowering her eyes. He stiffened as a great surge of pain enveloped him and she clutched at his arm helplessly.

“I could make one… you know… if you let me?” he muttered taking in deep breaths as the spasms subsided.

“Make one what?”

“Sonic…”

“I don’t think you have… time to…” she answered trying to keep her tears at bay.

“Time… you asked for time… can’t I do the same?”

“I wish I hadn’t… wish I had accepted it there and then…”

“You called me Doctor… if I was him I could repair myself just like that…”

“Can you tell them how to help you?”

“Help me die?”

“No… help to ease the pain…”

“When you do it the long way around it hurts like hell… all those cells renewing at quarter speed… agony… but I’m not ready to give up just yet… I don’t want to go… not when you’re so upset and asking me not to… I’ve got that bit right?”

“I… I want you to stay with me… forever… what do you mean the long way around? Cells re… what?”

“There is one thing that might help…”

“Yeah?”

“Histatin… Lysozyme…Opiorphin…”

“I’ll call the nurse…”

“No… Rose… you contain enough Histatin to kick start the reversal of the internal injuries that this body has sustained…enough Lysozyme to attack any infections I may have picked up and allow my body to repair itself and enough Opiorphin to reduce the pain by at least half…”

“I … what… where?”

“In your saliva…”

“What?”

“A kiss… that’s all I’m asking…”

“A kiss… but…”

“I love you… Rose Tyler. I don’t want to go… because I love you…”

“Oh… I love you too…”she gasped, now worried that this was his way of saying goodbye.

“Then… prove it…” Rose only took a beat to cotton on, it was a magnified beat what with his laboured breathing and the look of pure pain etched upon his face.

She kissed him sweetly, chastely and was surprised to find him responding almost too eagerly for a dying man. She pulled back and looked into his face.

“Sure that wasn’t a ruse just to get me to kiss you?”

“What, getting hit by a double-decker bus?”

“S’not funny…” she leant in and kissed him again and when she pulled back she could see that he looked more comfortable already.

“I bought you flowers… it was Christmas Eve and I bought you a dozen red roses…”

“Scattered all about you, the papers said…”

“Who needs flowers when I have the real thing? Now, can you either get a nurse to take this stuff off me or help me do it?”

“Doctor…”

“Ah… Twice now… that’s rather promising…” His eyes were alight with more than the kiss they had just shared; in fact they were glowing in a way that was very familiar to her. His hands were sparkling too and she looked at him afraid. “Oh, it’s fine… come on, get this Neanderthal equipment off me?” He was already pulling at tape and holding his hand up to her. She obliged gently pulling out the tube and freeing his hand which grabbed hers with very much more strength than she would have believed him possible of minutes before.

The machines had started to go off again and he sat up, leaned over and pulled the plugs from the wall.

“There now… where were we?” He was sitting up in bed, his complexion beginning to flush and that silly grin plastering across his face.

“I don’t get it… you were dying…”

“Yup… and you fixed me…” He tugged at her hand, bringing her back down to him and she melted into him as he encircled her in his now perfectly healthy arms.

“I… doubted you… I was wrong…” she whispered.

“Let’s not waste any more time with that… we’re on the same page now?”

“Yes… Doctor…”

“Three times the charm…” he grinned as he pulled her in for another kiss before the nurses ascended upon them.

“What happens now though?” she asked a little breathlessly after a rather long pause.

“Well... er… we get to… you know… live happily ever after, right?”

“There’s no argument from me…” she smiled as her tongue dipped onto the corner of her mouth…

They really did too… you know? Get to live happily ever after… well… once his broken legs had healed and… yes… there were a few dicey moments… well… I say a few… I meant lots… but… you know… they were very happy… all in all…

The End.


End file.
